Do you even pray, bro? - Mary's Peak, OR

This past week, my buddies and I hiked up to one of my favorite places around Oregon: Mary's Peak. The view up there is always amazing. Add to that sunset, and it's a gorgeous view.

Anyway, so we hiked up and were sitting there and enjoying the view. After jamming and singing a bit (there's a trend when I'm with friends...), one of my friends brought up a really interesting point.

"You know how we can easily sing and play worship songs for a half hour or even an hour? Why does it seem to be so hard to do that when we pray?"

We discussed a bit about prayer and faith, and he then suggested that we pray for 15 minutes. He started a stopwatch on his phone, and we started to pray.

And boy. That was an experience.

To be honest, in preparation for the hike, I thought that I was going end up writing about how the hike is worth it, and how in the Christian life it takes effort but the end result is worth the pain blah blah blah. You know.

But, God, in His infinite awesomeness, decided that something cooler than just an awesome view was waiting for us.

We prayed. About all sorts of stuff. We prayed for our schools, our town, our future, our friends. We prayed about ourselves. We gave glory to God.

I think it's common to hear about those people who can sit down and pray for hours on end, and immediately think "Wow. That's cool and all, but I'll never be able to do that." But, the thing is, prayer really isn't that complicated. It's a way that we can go to God, and talk to Him. That's it. We get to talk to our Creator. Our Father.

If you look at Acts and the story of the early church, you see that they pray together. A LOT. In fact, they do it so often that it can be easy to miss, to pass over. However, in many of the stories from Acts, the 'big' events are preceded by prayer. Not just any prayer, but communal prayer.

Now, personal prayer is important: Jesus established that when He would go out alone in the morning to pray and be with God (Mark 1:35). Yet, as seen in Acts, we don't just pray by ourselves. We pray with each other, for each other.

So, that day, we prayed. We watched the sun slowly set on the Valley and we prayed. When we finished up, my friend checked his phone: 20 minutes and 35 seconds, a solid 5 minutes over our 'goal'. Yet, I think to all of us, the time really didn't matter. What did matter is that we prayed together, as brothers and sisters in Christ, going to our loving Father, talking to Him, knowing that He was there, and heard every single word.

Matthew 18:20 (ESV)
For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.